


Press 'P' to Print

by ficteer



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, M/M, background abemiha and sakahiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:34:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3156002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficteer/pseuds/ficteer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His printer was a death trap, really. But it would be hard to hate after all this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Press 'P' to Print

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRIDGES-NEE-CHAN!!!!! It's not much, but I wrote you something in the hopes that you'd enjoy it.... I hope you have a really awesome day and a fantastic year to come!!! You're the sweetest person I know and you deserve every bit of love I know you'll get today!! = v= I've left this sort of open in case you like it enough for me to add more in the future, but I hope you enjoy this snippet!
> 
> edit: horrified i forgot this, but novelist nishihiro comes from haru (maktoot)

  
Hanai Azusa wouldn’t exactly say he loved his job, but he would, perhaps, say that he liked it quite a bit. The benefits were good, his cubicle was probably a little bit bigger than the others on his floor, and if he leaned back just so, he could look out the window onto the impressive Tokyo skyline. He had pictures of his family pinned to the sides, a few of his friends where they’d sent him postcards from various trips, a phone that fit quite nicely in the crook of his shoulder so he could type and chat at the same time, and, most importantly, his own printer.

Or rather, he  _used_  to have his own printer.

The morning had started off auspiciously, lulling him into a false sense of security for the rest of the day. His bus had been precisely on time, his phone completely charged as he went through his schedule for the week and made sure he had his to-do list perfectly lined up, and even had time to grab a cup of coffee before he went up to the twenty second floor where he worked. His chair was tucked perfectly into place, conforming to his body when he sat down and scooted forward to start his computer and his day in bright spirits. 

His good mood was stripped from him, however, when he went to print a report due within the next thirty minutes to his boss and instead he got an error message that was vastly more complicated than the ‘please load paper’ or ‘I’m not on the correct network please correct’ type message he usually got when there was a problem. No, it was come complex string of numbers and letters (error type 3829r-as242-05x has occurred) that even Google had no answer for. He turned to his printer, and pushed the power button to turn it off. He waited, then pushed it again, and the printer came on for a brilliant two seconds before seemingly leaving the mortal coil for whatever heaven printers went to upon expiration.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Hanai grumbled, first pushing the power button again, then tapping it, then opening all of the compartments and doors and poking around thingy-majigs (was this supposed to be able to move??) and doohicks (this didn’t look necessary to printer operation, surely it could come out) and moving this whirlagig ( _kerplunk_ oh shit, he hoped that was supposed to be removable…) and generally making the matter even worse, probably. After about twenty minutes of panicking, printer definitely in more pieces than it probably should be, Hanai decided both that printers were unquestionably designed by cruel people who were masochistically inclined and also that his printer was, irrevocably, dead.

With a low hiss of breath, Hanai leaned back in his chair, not to look out of the window onto the beautiful Tokyo skyline but to drag the palm of his hand over his face and breathe out a low “shit”. It was only when he felt the sticky wetness on his face that he realized that he must have gotten some ink on his fingers and now probably looked like a fratboy who’d passed out on the couch with his marker-wielding friends.

A quick-paced (and hopefully inconspicuous) trip to the bathroom confirmed the markings on his face but also gave him a chance to remove them (….mostly). Luckily, he didn’t get any on his clothes, as the dry cleaning place he’d used had apparently closed a week ago and the last thing he needed was to have to make an emergency trip to the more expensive place a few streets down. More importantly, however, it confirmed on the way back to his desk that his needing-to-be-printed report due to his boss in (a glance at his watch, another stripe of panic) ten minutes failing to leave a printer was not going to result in his termination, because on the way to the bathroom was a copy machine. The communal floor copy machine that he had never used, as the printer at his desk had been a gift and it was easier to use it than this clunky contraption. The copy machine that was about to save his job.

Hanai power walked over to his desk and plopped down in the chair, going back to print the report and selecting the copy machine for the floor. He hit the button, then stood back up, walking over to the machine and waiting. Nothing. Panicking a bit, Hanai looked around to see if maybe it had already printed and some ominous coworker was snickering at him while holding his report they’d swiped, and in doing so, he saw a  _second_  copy machine, further down. He glanced back down to this one, then to the other one, and he walked over to see if perhaps he’d just selected the wrong printer. Sure enough, this one was humming to life, pages of words spitting out, and he reached his hand out to grab it - 

“Oh,” someone said when his hand collided into theirs, and Hanai looked over, blinking down in shock as the person next to him blinked up. He was tall, but not as tall as Hanai, and he had high cheekbones and smooth skin and a cute curved nose and  _oh my god their hands were still touching_ -

“S-Sorry!” Hanai spluttered, snatching his hand back as if it was ten thousand degrees, though the heat on his cheeks made him wonder if that wasn’t quite inaccurate. The other guy was still staring at him, god he could  _feel_  the stare, and then soft laughter (he was laughing at him, the cute guy was  _laughing at him_ please let a hole open up and swallow him now) but then the sound of rustling papers, and a soft tap on his forearm. 

“These must be yours,” Cute Guy said, and Hanai brought his eyes from the floor to the papers, which indeed had the detailed report he’d spent half the morning cooking up (the report that was due to his boss in now four minutes). He took them, opening his mouth to say something (he didn’t know what), just as Cute Guy opened  _his_  mouth to say something, lips twisted in a smile and face as amused as it was charming. “You, uh,” Cute Guy reached up a hand and tapped his own face with his fingers. “You’ve got something, right here.”

“Oh my God,” Hanai groaned, covering his incinerated (and, apparently, more-obviously-than-he’d-thought marked) face with the report. “It’s… yeah, I know. Printer ink. I’m, uh, not having a good day.” He lowered the papers to look at his watch and saw the he had about three minutes to make the five-minute trek to his boss’ room to give him the report. “Anyway, thanks, I have to go.”

Cute Guy smiled as Hanai did a sharp turn on his heels and started power walking to his boss’ room, wiping at his face and hopefully removing the ink, not just smearing it around. The last thing he needed was his boss to say something about his face on top of everything else. 

As it turned out, Hanai was just on time with delivering the report, and neither his boss nor her secretary said anything about any marks on his face. He did, however, make a second trip to the bathroom and indeed found a tiny ink blemish on his nose, which seemed to come off well enough with another round of scrubbing. (Whether the pinkness from the harsh paper towel was an improvement, he wasn’t sure.) His workday continued, he put in a work order request for his personal printer, and he continued his day without any hiccups at all.

\----------

“What do you  _mean_ , you can’t fix it for two weeks?” Hanai asked, arms crossing as he leaned back in his office chair, phone cradled in his shoulder from where he was talking to the IT guy. 

“I mean, the parts you broke have to be special ordered and it’s going to take some time for them to get here. Be glad you didn’t mess it up any worse than you did,” the guy said in a voice that was all-too-telling about the lack of care he had for Hanai’s situation, and Hanai found himself grinding his teeth in irritation. Okay, so, maybe he’d kind of broken off an important piece trying to fix his printer when all that had been wrong besides a very easy to solve (if rare) hardware misalignment was that he’d rolled over the cord and unplugged it. And maybe that was a really stupid thing to do that would definitely never ever ever happen again. But  _two weeks_?! When he’d met the grumpy IT guy at his desk that morning for the estimate, he’d known it wouldn’t be pleasant getting this done, but  _two. Weeks._ “It’s not the end of the world. Just use the copy machine until I can fix it. Or get rid of the thing.”

“Right. Thanks,” Hanai sighed, cutting off what sounded like another rant about how it was his own fault for bringing in his own printer and not knowing how to fix it by hanging up the phone and then rubbing at his temples. He shot a glare down to his printer for its absolute insubordination, and for a moment, Hanai would have sworn it glared back. But he was an adult, an adult with a real job, and that real job required things that needed to be printed. But, as he brought up the printer window and looked at the two selections for which copy machine to use, Hanai felt himself hesitate. He wasn’t in a hurry today, and there wasn’t any ink on his face, and he was wearing one of his nicer dress shirts that looked really nice with this tie, and before he’d really made a conscious decision to do so, he’d selected the printer on the other side of the floor.

Hanai walked over to the distant printer, finding that someone else was printing something and his was in queue. He swallowed nervously, staring at the printer and wondering how silly he looked, standing there waiting for Cute Guy to come collect his stuff, except that was ridiculous, really it was, because it was Completely Normal for him to be standing at a printer waiting for his things to print and no one would know that he was waiting for someone since he wasn’t looking around. Except… well, then he  _was_  looking around, because the stuff stopped printing, and the next job started that still wasn’t his, and he had a few moments to kill.

No one on this side of the room had the same shaved head or long legs that Cute Guy had, though he could only see into most of the cubicles facing this direction and none facing the other. He felt himself fidget, eyes scanning for someone he’d never even met, really, and for some reason that he didn’t understand, and really what was he even thinking he would say if he  _did_  see the guy, huh? ‘Yes, hello, my name is Hanai and I thought you were really cute and you kinda laughed at my suffering but that’s okay because I like how your face looks and that chuckle thing you did sounded really nice’? Yeah, no.

The print job finished, and Hanai peered at the beginning of the next print job to see that it was his starting this time, and he basically had four pages for Cute Guy to show up before this trip to the other side of the room was officially declared a waste of time. Page two came, then three, and when page four was spat out onto the neat pile, Hanai was still alone by the printer, no one around save for himself and the potted plant tucked into the corner. 

At least, that was what he thought, but when he turned to head back to his desk, he all but ran into none other than Cute Guy. There was a surprised noise, and a hiss of pain, and Hanai saw a coffee cup in Cute Guy’s hand and coffee streaming down his skin.

“Are you okay?!” Hanai asked, and Cute Guy blinked up at him before smiling and laughing a bit.

“Oh, yeah, the coffee here isn’t that hot, I’m sad to say,” he said, taking his hand and flicking the coffee off of it with a sharp motion of his hand. “Nice to see you again, now that I think about it. I’m Suyama.”

Hanai supplied his name as well, taking Suyama’s name and holding it close to his chest while kind of irritated that Suyama had likely remembered him because of the ink stain on his nose. “I’m sorry for running into you. Are… you sure you’re okay? It didn’t get on your clothes or anything, did it?” 

Suyama looked down at himself, plucking at his shirt with his clean hand. “No, doesn’t look like it, but if I did, it’s fine. I have a friend who runs a dry cleaning shop, so it’s not a big deal.”

“Oh, really?” Hanai said, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if angels came from the drop ceiling and pulled out golden trumpets to sing. “Do you have a card for them or something? The place I was using went out of business last week and I’ve been trying to find a reasonable place.”

“Uh,” Suyama started, looking a bit floundered, “I think so? Come on, I might have one in my desk.” He turned and started walking, and Hanai followed, holding his print out and doing absolutely everything in his power not to notice the fact that Suyama looked really,  _really_  good in a lavender dress shirt. He did, however, make a point to pay attention to exactly which cubicle was his, noting with mild interest a few pictures of what looked like family (two brothers?). Suyama put down his coffee mug, taking a few tissues and wiping off his coffee-stained hand, then opened his drawer to dig around for what looked like a little box. He opened it, revealing a mass of business cards, then he pulled one out, handing it to Hanai with a smile. “Here. His name is Sakaeguchi, a friend of mine from high school. Tell him I sent you, and he might give you a nice deal or something!”

“Thanks. I appreciate it, Suyama,” Hanai said, taking the business card and tucking it in his pocket. He stood there for a second as awkwardness started to fill the space, not really quite sure how to continue the conversation and definitely,  _definitely_  wanting to continue it, but he was saved (ruined?) by someone further down the line calling for Suyama’s help. “Oh, I’ll let you get back to work, then,” Hanai said, and Suyama gave him another friendly look before going over to help whoever it was had called him. Hanai then turned back, counting the cubicles to the path where he walked back towards his own, memorizing it carefully. He then put the card from his pocket onto his desk, on top of the things he’d printed, sighing pleasantly. 

\----------

Hanai took his shirts to the shop the next morning on his way to work and found out that, indeed, mentioning Suyama’s name got him his first clean free, and an earful about how apparently Suyama and Sakaeguchi had played baseball together back in high school, then roomed together in university. Suyama had majored in economics but had a penchant for books, and though Hanai was interested in picking Sakaeguchi’s brain for more information, time was not his friend and he had to leave with a ticket and a buzzing brain.

He sat in his chair and scooted into his cubicle, poking around on his computer as he pulled together his to-do list from yesterday afternoon and prioritized it. He spent a good portion of the morning crunching some numbers and putting them into a detailed spreadsheet, and then finished with an excited exhale. It was time to print his report to put in his binder, which meant a trip to the other side of the room and, hopefully, an encounter with Suyama. He clicked the button, and pushed off from his desk, sliding his hands into his pockets as he made his way over to the copy machine, carefully keeping his eyes neutral and not making it obvious that he was going to meet Suyama.

“Oh, good morning!” a pleasant voice said, and Hanai turned (carefully, this time) to see Suyama, coffee in a covered cup. Seeing where his eyes travelled, Suyama held it up, laughing cheerfully. “I thought this made better sense than walking around with a mug like I usually do.”

“Yeah, probably,” Hanai agreed, rubbing the back of his neck nervously because today, Suyama was wearing a jade green dress shirt and it looked just as nice on him as the lavender one had. “Thanks for the recommendation, by the way. Sakaeguchi-san was as kind as I expected.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty great,” Suyama agreed, the sound of the paper humming into the feeder filling the few seconds of heavy silence between them. “We used to play baseball together, back in the day.”

Hanai perked up, no longer playing with the curls at his nape as his hands came forward in his excitement. “Yeah, he was telling me that! I played too, back in high school. Had to quit for university, though. I didn’t have enough time with both my majors.”

“Both?” Suyama said, eyebrow lifting, and Hanai felt himself sweat a little at Suyama’s interest. “Do you mind me asking what?”

“Business and English,” Hanai responded, watching as Suyama’s face bloomed into a smile with a tug of butterfly wings in his gut. “I, uh, wasn’t really sure what I wanted, and I still don’t, really, so they seemed safe enough choices at the time.”

Before Suyama could make any kind of response, someone cleared their throat, and Hanai stepped forward, away from the copy machine so they could get to whatever it was they were printing. Then, when he saw that the spreadsheet he’d sent over here had long since gone cold in the document feeder, he snatched them up, turning around and a little annoyed with how excited he was to see Suyama was still standing there. He was waiting patiently, smile slow and organic like a gentle blooming sprout, and Hanai stared at it for a moment while trying to untangle his tongue from itself. Then, a bit of movement, and Hanai’s eyes went to where Suyama’s finger tapped the side of his to-go cup of coffee with a movement that felt a little deliberate. And then, Hanai looked back to Suyama’s face in time to see him slowly raise an eyebrow in perfect time with Hanai’s internal temperature. 

“Uh, Suyama….”

“Yes?” Suyama said, voice very patient and round in Hanai’s ears. It was enough.

“Would you be interested in getting some coffee with me… sometime? Um, not in the break room, I mean. Good coffee.” Hanai felt his whole body stiffen as Suyama’s face broke into a grin, and suddenly Hanai wondered if perhaps it had been so much an accident, meeting Suyama all these times at the copy machine.

 

 

His rebellious printer went to a good home, as far as Hanai could tell, both from the fact that the angry gentleman in IT still sent him inflammatory emails about its idiotic new owner every once in a while, even going so far as to call him up one time this ‘Mihashi’ person apparently set it on  _fire_. (Knowing his printer, Hanai didn't doubt it one bit, and was just exhaustingly glad the thing had chosen another victim and not him.) The call made him very, very glad that he wasn’t on floor six, where the nervous blond had met him to take the clunky piece of crap off his hands, and also, apparently, where the IT Department was. Hanai considered sending the poor blond flowers once he got his next paycheck.

He still went to the far copy machine, using the excuse to the suspicious person next to him that it was good exercise after sitting in his chair for so long, but more definitely because he was  _very_ interested in seeing if Suyama’s rainbow of shirts ever came with a color that didn’t look amazing on him. So far, he’d looked good in just about everything and was well-aware of Hanai’s assessment, a fact that Suyama’s knowing smile every time Hanai stumbled over his greeting in the morning told him well enough. The coffee date had gone well enough that Hanai had taken to practice to the plant by the copy machine in practicing asking for another, only to discover a few days later Suyama lingering over his shoulder, blushing and laughing behind a hand before agreeing jovially, and it was on their third such encounter at a cute little juke-box joint that Suyama confessed that yes, he had indeed remembered Hanai because of the ink splotch on his nose, but only because it had looked a bit like a heart and it had felt like destiny, sort of. Hanai spent the next five minutes hiding, red-faced, behind his menu.

The day Hanai walked into the jewelry shop, he’d sweat so much he’d taken his shirts straight to the cleaner the next morning on his way into work. Sakaeguchi apologized profusely for having been caught in such a compromising position with the baggy-eyed novelist Hanai recognized as none other than  _the_  Nishihiro Shintaro, and though he didn’t mind, he was grateful both for the lifetime of free cleanings and the signed copy of Nishihiro’s latest novel.

Hanai opened his email a few months later, clicking with a hand bearing a golden ring, finding a picture of a very familiar printer in the background of a photo Abe the IT guy had sent, as grumpy-faced as ever but perhaps not, if only because the blond Hanai recognized as the recipient of the printer from hell was standing next to him, holding his hand and smiling brilliantly. The body of the email held a terse ‘thanks for the shitty printer’ message and was probably the closest thing he’d ever get to an admission that it was because of Hanai that he’d apparently found love of his own.

With a huff of laughter at the picture and a glance down at his watch to check it was that time of morning, Hanai clicked print.

 


End file.
